FA Cup History: The Oldest National Football Competition

FA Cup history begins with a brief proposal made on 20 July 1871, and more than 150 years later it is still being written every season. The Football Association Challenge Cup is the oldest national football competition in the world. It lost its original trophy in a robbery, changed home several times, said goodbye to replays in its main rounds and has been won by a club from outside England exactly once. It has also had a winner from outside the Football League and some of the most famous upsets in the sport. This is its story, from the first final at Kennington Oval to Manchester City's victory in May 2026, with the records as they stand in September 2026.

From a 29-word proposal to the first final

The idea came from Charles W. Alcock, the secretary of The Football Association. At a committee meeting held at the offices of The Sportsman newspaper, he put forward a motion just 29 words long: that a Challenge Cup should be established in which every club belonging to the Association would be invited to compete. It was carried, and invitations went out to the 50 member clubs of the time, but only 15 entered the first edition, in the 1871-72 season. The first ties were played on 11 November 1871.

After byes and walkovers, only eleven matches had been played when Crystal Palace, Queen's Park of Glasgow, Royal Engineers and Wanderers reached the semi-finals, both of which were staged at Kennington Oval. Queen's Park held Wanderers to a 0-0 draw but could not afford another trip to London for the replay, so they withdrew. That Crystal Palace, incidentally, is not the club now playing in the Premier League.

The first FA Cup final was played at Kennington Oval on 16 March 1872, in front of around 2,000 spectators who had each paid a shilling. Wanderers beat Royal Engineers 1-0 with a goal from Morton Betts, who played under the pseudonym A. H. Chequer, and Alcock himself captained the winners. The trophy was not presented on the day: Wanderers received it weeks later.

Wanderers set the tone for the early years. As holders they were given a bye straight to the 1873 final, a rule that applied only that once, and they beat Oxford University 2-0. In all they won five of the first seven finals. Then the balance shifted: Blackburn Olympic won in 1883, Blackburn Rovers won three in a row and, with professionalism legalised in 1885, the new clubs of the north overtook the amateur sides of the south.

One stolen trophy and five cups

The original trophy, made in silver by Martin, Hall and Company for £20, stood about 18 inches high and soon became known as the little tin idol. After winning it in 1895, Aston Villa allowed it to be displayed in the Birmingham shop window of William Shillcock, a boot and shoe maker, and on the night of 11 September 1895 it was stolen. It was never seen again. In 1958 an elderly career criminal, Harry Burge, told a newspaper that he had taken it and melted it down to make counterfeit coins, but the crime was never officially solved. In all, five trophies have been presented:

• 1872-1895: the original, stolen in Birmingham while Aston Villa held it.
• 1896-1910: a replica. It is the oldest surviving FA Cup trophy; in 2020 it was sold at auction for £760,000 to Sheikh Mansour, the owner of Manchester City, who lent it to the National Football Museum.
• 1911-1991: a new, larger design by Fattorini and Sons of Bradford, first won, coincidentally, by Bradford City.
• 1992-2013: a replica of the 1911 cup, retired because it had become too fragile to keep repairing.
• Since 2014: the current trophy, made by the London silversmiths Thomas Lyte from 6.3 kg of sterling silver and first lifted by Arsenal.

From the Oval to Wembley

The Oval staged the first final and almost every final up to 1892; the second, in 1873, was played at Lillie Bridge. After two finals in the north, at Fallowfield in Manchester in 1893 and at Goodison Park in 1894, the final settled at Crystal Palace from 1895 to 1914, where some crowds passed 100,000. The First World War took the 1915 final to Old Trafford, the next four competitions were not played, and when football resumed Stamford Bridge hosted the finals of 1920, 1921 and 1922.

1923: the White Horse Final

Wembley, then called the Empire Stadium, was completed only four days before its first match, the final of 28 April 1923 between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United. Demand overwhelmed it. The announced attendance was 126,047, but nobody knows how many people actually got in: Wembley Stadium itself speaks of more than 200,000, and The FA notes that many believe perhaps more than twice that number were inside. Fans spilled onto the pitch until mounted police cleared it, and the lasting image is of PC George Scorey on his horse Billie, a grey that looked white on black-and-white film. Bolton won 2-0.

Wembley then hosted every final until 2000, the only exception being the 1970 replay at Old Trafford. While the old stadium was demolished and rebuilt, the final moved to the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff from 2001 to 2006. It returned to the new Wembley in 2007, when Chelsea beat Manchester United 1-0 with an extra-time goal from Didier Drogba; seven years earlier, Chelsea had also won the last final at the old Wembley.

Cardiff 1927 and the clubs with the most wins

On 23 April 1927 Cardiff City beat Arsenal 1-0 at Wembley. The goal came when a shot from Hughie Ferguson squirmed out of the grasp of Arsenal's goalkeeper, Dan Lewis, and ended up in the net. According to The FA, Cardiff became the first, and so far the only, club to take the cup out of England, and that was also the first final broadcast live on national radio. Cardiff had lost the 1925 final to Sheffield United and reached another in 2008, losing to Portsmouth. Much earlier, Queen's Park of Glasgow had played in the finals of 1884 and 1885, losing both to Blackburn Rovers.

As of September 2026, Arsenal hold the record with 14 FA Cups, the most recent in 2020. Manchester United are next with 13, the latest in 2024. Four clubs share third place with eight: Chelsea, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City, who reached that total in May 2026. Aston Villa have seven, and Newcastle United and Blackburn Rovers six each. Manchester United have played in the most finals, 22, one more than Arsenal.

The individual records have an Arsenal accent too. Arsène Wenger won seven FA Cups as Arsenal manager, more than any other manager in the competition's history, and Ashley Cole collected a record seven winners' medals as a player, three with Arsenal and four with Chelsea. And no club has ever won more than three in a row: Wanderers and Blackburn Rovers share that record.

Tottenham 1901 and the giant-killers

Since the Football League was founded in 1888, only one club from outside it has won the FA Cup: Tottenham Hotspur, then of the Southern League, in 1901. They drew 2-2 with Sheffield United at Crystal Palace and won the replay 3-1 at Burnden Park in Bolton. Lower divisions have had their days too. Notts County became the first Second Division winners in 1894, second-tier Sunderland beat Leeds United in the 1973 final, Second Division Southampton beat Manchester United in 1976, and West Ham United's victory over Arsenal in 1980 is still the last by a club from outside the top flight.

And then there are the famous giant-killings: Hereford United's win over Newcastle in 1972 and Wimbledon's final win over Liverpool in 1988, both told in their own stories on this site; Wigan Athletic, who beat Manchester City in the 2013 final and became the first club to win the cup and be relegated in the same season; non-League Lincoln City, quarter-finalists in 2017; and, in January 2026, sixth-tier Macclesfield, who knocked out the holders, Crystal Palace, despite the 117 places separating them in the league pyramid.

The end of replays

For more than a century a draw meant a replay, and until 1990-91 a tie could need several of them. From 1991-92, ties in the rounds proper were limited to a single replay, followed if necessary by extra time and penalties. The last final to need a replay was in 1993, won by Arsenal against Sheffield Wednesday, and the first settled on penalties came in 2005, when Arsenal beat Manchester United at the Millennium Stadium. Later, replays disappeared from the quarter-finals, in 2016-17, and from the fifth round, in 2018-19.

The decisive step was announced in April 2024. As part of a six-year agreement between The FA and the Premier League, replays were scrapped from the first round proper onwards from 2024-25, a decision that many lower-league clubs criticised because those matches had been a valuable source of income. Under the 2026-27 rules, replays survive only in the qualifying rounds: from the first round proper to the final, a tie that is level after 90 minutes goes to 30 minutes of extra time and, if still level, to penalties.

The latest finals, up to May 2026

The last seven finals were all played at Wembley and produced six different winners:

• 2020: Arsenal 2-1 Chelsea, behind closed doors, with two goals from Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang.
• 2021: Leicester City 1-0 Chelsea, with a superb Youri Tielemans strike that gave Leicester their first FA Cup.
• 2022: Liverpool 0-0 Chelsea, with Liverpool winning 6-5 on penalties.
• 2023: Manchester City 2-1 Manchester United, with two goals from İlkay Gündoğan.
• 2024: Manchester United 2-1 Manchester City, with goals from Alejandro Garnacho and Kobbie Mainoo.
• 2025: Crystal Palace 1-0 Manchester City, with an Eberechi Eze goal that gave the club its first major trophy.
• 2026: Manchester City 1-0 Chelsea, with a goal from Antoine Semenyo.

The 2026 final was played on 16 May. Semenyo settled it in the second half with a flick at the near post from Erling Haaland's cross, giving Manchester City their eighth FA Cup and a domestic cup double with the League Cup. City also became the first team to play in four consecutive FA Cup finals, while Chelsea lost a fourth final in a row, after those of 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Simulate the FA Cup and the Carabao Cup

History is not only for reading. On our FA Cup page you can take the 2025/26 bracket and pick every winner again, round by round, to see whether City still lift the trophy or a smaller club goes all the way. The 2026/27 rounds will appear on the same page as soon as they are drawn, starting with the first round proper on 7 November 2026, when the League One and League Two clubs enter.

The Carabao Cup page covers the 2026/27 League Cup with an AI simulation for every tie. And if you only want one match, the AI match simulator plays any fixture in a tactical view or in a physics arena, and arena matches can be exported as a vertical video.

"The FA Cup has changed its trophy, its stadium and its rules, but it still keeps the promise that a small club can topple a giant."

• FA Cup page: re-pick the 2025/26 bracket and follow the 2026/27 rounds as soon as they are drawn.
• Carabao Cup page: the 2026/27 rounds with an AI simulation for every tie.
• AI match simulator for any fixture, in a tactical view or a physics arena, with a vertical video export of arena matches.
• Premier League simulator: play the rest of the season from the real table and the real fixture list.
• Championship, League One and League Two simulators, built on the same idea.

"Every giant-killing starts with a draw: pick yours and see how far it goes."